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This Side of Paradise | Introduction

In the summer of 1919, after encouraging him to perform two revisions, Scribner’s finally signed a contract with the unknown author F. Scott Fitzgerald to publish his first novel. Fitzgerald sold his first major short stories while waiting for the printing, but This Side of Paradise was his major debut, an immediate success that marked both the dawn of the Jazz Age and the dawn of Fitzgerald’s turbulent career. An insider’s satire of the American aristocracy and the social hierarchy of Ivy League universities, the novel turned Fitzgerald into a daring symbol for the Jazz Age, caused a sensation in the older generation, and inspired many in the younger generation to rush out and buy a copy.

The novel is much more than a sensation, however; it is a landmark in modernist fiction that challenged literary tradition and helped give a voice to a younger generation shocked by the horrors of World War I. An admittedly self-obsessed portrait of the “egotist” Amory Blaine and his intellectual development, Fitzgerald’s novel is also a portrait of his own artistic development that led to his emergence as an author now considered perhaps the most important American modernist writer. Widely criticized as a haphazard collection of short stories that fail to cohere as a whole, This Side of Paradise does reveal some naivety in its young author, but its unique structure is also a vital part of what makes it a challenging and innovative text. In the early 2000s it was recognized as an enormously influential and compelling novel by an emerging legend of American literature.

This Side of Paradise Summary

Book 1: The Romantic Egotist
The novel opens with a description of Amory Blaine’s mother Beatrice and her exciting life of travel with her son Amory until his appendix bursts on a ship to Europe, and he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While in private school there, Armory kisses Myra St. Claire on the cheek and takes on various elitist values before Beatrice gives in to his request to go to a boarding school. After enrolling at the school, where he is unpopular because of his arrogance, Amory meets his friend and mentor Monsignor Darcy. Amory is more popular during his second year because he succeeds at football and as a writer for the school paper, and he decides to enroll at Princeton University.

At Princeton, Amory once again gradually becomes a social success by acting in plays and writing for the college newspaper, and he meets some of his most important friends, such as Kerry and Burne Holiday, and Tom D’Invilliers. He travels back to Minneapolis to meet his first love, Isabelle Borgé, at a “petting party” for upper class daughters, and they exchange long letters while Amory is at Princeton with his elitist group of friends. Then, coming back from a night out in New York, Amory is shocked and dismayed to see his friend Dick Humbird die in a car accident.

When he next sees Isabelle at the prom, they quarrel and Amory leaves her, and this is followed by Amory’s discovery that he has failed math and therefore will be expelled from the editorial board of the college paper. Amory’s father then dies... » Complete This Side of Paradise Summary